... because we humans can only work
for a future we can imagine.
FIRST
CONTACTS
One
of the virtual 'skins' from Imagine The Future
Inc's re-interpretation of a traditional Kulin possum
skin cloak created by Csaba Szamosy from images contributed by project
partners, Painting the future real,
1996. Please note: the indigenous designs are the property of the people
of the Kulin nation and are subject to a moral rights agreement.
[2002
version and accompanying story First
contacts: when two cultures meet. ]
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The following images were used in this digital composite about the early contact between the Kulin and Europeans on Victoria's basalt plain.
Watercolour contributed by Geelong Historical Archives and photographed at Geelong Municipal Library by Merrill Findlay, with the permission of Chief Archivist. Only a detail of this watercolour was used in the digital composite. The white man in animal skins in the right of the painting is William Buckley, the escaped convict who lived with the Wathaurung clans of the Kulin nation for thirty years before he returned to his own people.
This pattern was adapted by consultant artist Csaba Szamosy from a clan design incised into a traditional Kulin shield that is believed to have been manufactured in pre-European days or before the full impact of European colonisation was felt by Aboriginal people in Victoria. The design was copied at the Museum of Victoria under the supervision of Bill Nicholson, Chairperson of the Wirundjeri Association, and Indigenous Studies curator Mark Grist. It remains the cultural property of the Kulin people and is subject to a moral rights agreement.
A copy of the 'treaty' land speculator John Batman 'signed' with Kulin people in 1835 on behalf of the Port Phillip Association, to 'purchase' all the land from what is now Melbourne to the Bellarine Peninsula and inland as far as Gisborne. The facsimile of the treaty was contributed to the project by John Chadderton, student housing officer at Victoria University of Technology.
Return to the possum skin cloak
To About the project
To the Bioregion
To the Painting the Future Real home page.
To the Imagine The Future Inc
home page.
'Painting the future real' is an initiative of Imagine The Future Inc
with the support of project partners.
For more information, contact Imagine The Future at
340 Gore Street, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia
phone: +61 3 9417 2033, fax: +61 3 9416 0767
email: imagine@peg.apc.org, or merrillf@dingo.vut.edu.au
[Page history: created and first published on www.ecoversity.org.au as part o f Painting the future real (1995-97), the prototype for Redreaming the plain (1998-2002); taken off-line in 1998 and re-posted in a slightly modified form in July 2004 as a web archive. For more information contact redreaming@rmit.edu.au.]